Morning Bits

Ruthie Blum is having a field day with this: “Here’s a factoid about the Middle East that may have slipped by you while focusing on Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s massacres, Egypt’s Islamization and Israel’s response to Mitt Romney’s recent visit: The highest consumption of beauty products and cosmetic surgery in the world today exists in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. . . . [I]t has revealed that many of the companies that provide high-quality equipment and products used in the cosmetic surgery industry are — gasp! — Israeli.” Read the whole thing.

With those “buyer’s remorse ads,” the Republican Jewish Coalition ad man should be beating his chest. “This election could be a watershed moment for the Republican Jewish Coalition. The same economic issues that are driving voters to Mitt Romney may also move Jewish votes to the GOP’s column. And Obama’s mistreatment of Israel should inspire Jews to give Republicans a chance. The president has insisted on putting ‘daylight’ between America and Israel’s positions, and made the unprecedented demand that Israel return to its indefensible 1967 borders. The RJC is prepared to welcome Jewish Democrats into the fold.”

The RJC folks will be dancing the jig over former Obama supporter Marty Peretz’s bashing of the president he once supported. “I think that Obama is a child, or maybe let’s say a grandchild, of the New Left, with casual moral judgments made about very intricate ethical alternatives. . . . Leading by following — it’s really a sick phrase.”

Mitt Romney is going to town on this. “Staples, for instance, when we got going we didn’t rent some big fancy office building to start the business. We were brand new. And so, the managers there and our team said, ‘Look, we are going to use the back of an old shopping center that had pretty much been abandoned and we’re going to use the back of that.’ . . . Now, I compare that, by the way, with what happens with President Obama’s government giving hundreds of millions of dollars to some start-up company like Solyndra. Their corporate headquarters looks like the Taj Mahal. . . . Today, Staples employs roughly 90,000 people. And Solyndra, I think you know how many people it employs.”

The Republicans will be having a party with this until the election. “Buried in the treasure trove of White House emails related to Solyndra released Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is one suggesting that concerns about Solyndra’s viability were shared all the way up to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley a full six months before the company went bust.”

While Democrats are tooting their own horns on winning at the Supreme Court, Obamacare is still a policy loser. This is only one of its many defects: “Between 2013 and 2022, new entitlement spending will reach $1.7 trillion even though the main entitlement expansions do not launch until 2014. Over a decade of full implementation, the new entitlement spending will approach $2 trillion. Moreover, this spending will increase at a rapid rate each year — 6 percent annually from 2017 through 2022.”

Why Democrats aren’t jumping for joy over that 8.254 percent unemployment rate. “[T]he July jobs report affirmed the now-certain reality that the unemployment rate won’t drop below eight percent between today and November. And no sitting president since World War II has been re-elected with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent.”

We should be kicking up our heels when presidential candidates refuse to opine on fast food. Not everything is a presidential issue. “Obama, Romney don’t bite on Chick-fil-A.”

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